Volcano Mambacho

So today we decided to go to Volcano Mambacho. I haven't really slept well in this heat so I kept waking up during the night and early into the morning. So now I'm tired. I ate some snacks and I had some fruit. Then drank some coffee and off we went (Mike, Verena, and I) to find the bus to Mambacho. After talking to a couple people, and asking directions along the way, we found the bus stop. We had to walk through an interesting market  to get there. They sold food and a little bit of everything else like clothes, piggy banks, and soap. We got on the bus, which I assumed had been waiting for us, and rode to the stop to Mambacho. We then paid a motortaxi (in Guatemala it's also called tuk tuk) to the volcano entrance. We then decided that we would walk to the volcano ($3 instead of get driven up $16). Now this all seemed like a good idea in the beginning but as we began to walk and shuttles passed us I think we all thought twice. It was a hard long walk up some steep hills. Every time we thought we were done it just got worse and worse. We stopped at a pretty view point and met some tourist that were amazed we had walked.

When we finally reached the top...some hours later...we were exhausted. We had taken many rest break along the way. We had even, at one point, laid in the middle of the road and only got up when we heard a car coming.

I think the most annoying thing about the trip was the tourist getting driven up in the shuttle and staring at us. Some even waved. If your not giving us a ride then don't wave! When we got to the top we walked around the crater rim. It was okay.

Most of the time you couldn't even see the crater as it was covered by trees and the trees blocked out view. I think we were all pretty over it by that point. I think it would have been more impressive if we didn't walk all the way up...not sure. Then we walked back down! Now normally you think waking down isn't bad but it was. Walking down hurt my knees. It was hard beacuse you have to try to walk in such a way that you don't roll down the hill. We stopped to grab soemthing to eat at the midpoint of the volcano. I had a smoothie which was nice. Then we finished our terrible walk down the rest of the volcano. When we got to the entrance we didn't see a motor taxi so we began walking to the road. Finally a motortaxi came along but was trying to overcharge us so we just walked the rest of the way down the road. We waited for the bus and when it came took the bus back to Granada. By this time it was evening. I thought we would be gone a couple hours and return in the afternoon but this was not the case. Afterwards we all kind of just laid around as we were very tired. Then I handwashed clothes! Mike and Verena hand washed a couple of their stuff as well. Then I went to the Central Park to buy street food (yup I am back at it). I went back to the hostel, ate, and I spent the rest of the night chilling with Mike and Verena and browsing the web. All in all a long a$$ day!